Day 24-Full Circle--The Choice is Ours #edcmooc

photo courtesy www.sallyhepler.com

The Introduction: Approaching Post-Humanism, by Neil Badmington, goes to great length to summarize the view of Descartes as the originator of the accepted definition of “what is human.” He states:

“There is…an absolute difference between the human and the inhuman: only the former has the capacity for rational thought. Reason belongs solely to the human and, as such, serves to unite the human race. ‘We’ may have different types of bodies, but because reason is a property of the mind (which, for Descartes, is distinguishable from the body), deep down ‘we’ are all the same.” (Badmington 4)

As we (humans) continue to evolve, as technology moves from healing to enhancing, we will be pressed with the task of deciding what future we want for the creatures of the Earth.  One possibility is expressed in the video True Skin. 

In this short film, man has “progressed” to a point where the norm is physical enhancements.  If a person is “entirely organic,” they are considered a lesser quality.  The poor and indigent are those who cannot afford enhancements.  This is demonstrated by the sign which reads, “SERIOUSLY --NOT HIRING NATURALS”  In this video, the narrator has stolen a brain implant which has made him the target of an all-out manhunt.  As the government agents are closing in on him, he reached for a fingerprint pad, when touched it will “backing up” his consciousness so that it can be downloaded into a future body.

This future society might appear utopian to some, but to me it is frankly dystopian.  Medical science has made amazing progress in area of prosthetics for the healing of injury and birth defects (utopian).  But should these services become available to the highest bidder, making them less or un-available to those who actually need them (dystopian)?  And what of the concept of “backing up” your memories so that you can “download” into another body? No thank you.  When I finish my term on this earth, I am perfectly ready to begin my journey into the next stage of existence.  Trapping a soul in an endless loop of earthly bodies would condemn them to an eternal hell of self-imposed “ground-hog days” without the opportunity to progress.

The face and future of posthumanism are, as N. Katherine Hayles recognises, uncertain: the prefix does not pre-fix. What matters, rather, is that thought keeps moving in the name of a beyond, in the shadow of the unknown, in the fault-lines of the ‘post-’. (Badmington 10)

It seems we have come full circle.  In a blog post of the week 1 readings (Day 2), I quoted the Polish-American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer who declared,

'We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice.'

As human kind moves forward into the new world which technology will make possible, only we can decide which way we will move forward. 

Day 18 - "I'll have the Veggie Burger, Please" #edcmooc

"They're Made Out of Meat," the fourth video in the Week 3 assortment is a perfectly horrific video.  With mere vocal inflection and basic dialog this short flick manages to dehumanize and even engender disgust for the human being.  Two men from outer space discuss earthlings as "meat" who are "born meat" and who "die meat" and make "meat sounds." 

While watching this video, it is difficult to remember all that is beautiful about the "meat" that makes up the human form--from a newborn, to a child on a school yard, to an expectant mother, to a bent old man.  Yes, they are made of meat, and bones and energy and a spiritual essence which sets us apart from any other species on earth. 

Two days ago I read the term "selfie" for the first time. According to the Urban Dictionary, a Selfie is: "A picture taken of yourself that is planned to be uploaded to Facebook, Myspace or any other sort of social networking website."  Today a dear friend texted me this picture of her two year old son with only one word in the text-"selfie."  I Photoshopped texture and blur into the photo as she was reluctant to have her son's image bouncing freely around the web, but you can still see the pure joy in the face of this very young digital native who is pleased a punch with his newly acquired selfie skills.  In my mind, this makes him human, not meat.

Day 15 - Putting the Human in eLearning #edcMOOC

The first week 3 video, Toyota GT86, was about a new model of Toyota which literally breaks/drives out of the boring, emotionless, muted colored, digital world--through a glass enclosure dome to the vibrantly colored real world where everything is exciting and desirable.  

Compare this to eLearning. Do our students want a boring, emotionless, muted colored, text-based course or would they rather "break through" to a vibrantly colored learning environment which includes audio and video interactions with their teacher and classmates? In Steve Kolowich's article, The Human Element, he suggests that student retention and success rates can be improved by professors using video and audio of themselves to teach and interact with their online students.  The article goes on to say, 

"For Hersh, engagement goes hand-in-hand with audio-visual communication. The more that exchanges occurring within an online learning environment resemble those that occur in classrooms, he says, the more that students will feel connected to their professors and classmates, and the more likely they will be to stay in a program."

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/29/lms#ixzz2lXD92xoE 
Inside Higher Ed

My personal experience leads me to agree.  In my own online Business Management course, I simulate my face-to-face classroom in several ways, but my favorite example is to use VoiceThread (www.voicethread.com) in place of the text based discussion board several times during the semester.  I receive consistent student feedback which states that seeing and hearing their fellow students' comments makes it feel "more like a classroom," and they like it because it adds variety to their online experience.  

I believe as we increase human interaction in eLearning, we are better able to reach the human on the other end of the digital chalk board and bring color to their educational world.  

Day 9 - From A Day of Glass to A School of Glass #edcmooc

A Day of Glass was utopian to the extreme.  From the glass walls that brighten to wake you up to the playful family relationships that thrive on the super-iPad electronic interactions to the doctors who can look inside your brain to find out what ails you, UTOPIA! But as an educator, the educational uses were even more over the top. From the bulletin boards which kept up to the minute announcements, the architectural glass walls with interactive lesson information, the smart boards with bio-metric response to the teacher's touch and the lesson on color, Awesome! And then the field trip to the Redwoods--I've been to those very redwoods and I've NEVER seen those dinosaurs! I'll bet if I had that glass, I'd see the dinos! And The Bridge was merely a continuation on a smaller scale of A Day of Glass.  Technology's only purpose in the future is to make mankind's life better...to improve education, right? Right?!

The entire time I watched these two videos, another movie kept playing in my mind. Ender's Game, based on the novel by Orson Scott Card, just hit US theaters November 1, 2013. Ender was set primarily in educational environments and most of these were constructed of architectural glass, glass counters with reactive bio-metric surfaces, remote controlled devices which reacted to mere muscle control rather than sticks or buttons--all that we have talked about.  Academic utopia, right? One would think. Except that in Ender's "utopia" the students were being educated to wage war. They were being trained to defend Earth against the enemy who almost wiped out humans 50 years ago, should they return.  
**SPOILER ALERT**  (The book has been around for 30 years so spoilers follow.  If you want to see the movie and haven't read the book, stop here!)

In Ender's utopian educational system where they need to train a 14 year old military force to lead the earth to victory against the alien/bug enemy, no technological advance is spared.  Ender moves up through the ranks with various plot twists and ends up as commander-in-chief-to-be, with only the final exam to go.  He has his team around him in the simulation room near to the enemy planet when he gives it his all and as he sacrifices his entire force, he annihilates the entire species and "wins the game."  Only he soon finds out that it was NOT a simulation, but he had actually committed genocide. The boy is devastated as he thought he was only playing a game.

The metaphors here are many. Ender is the savior of humanity.  He is a third child which is only allowed by special government permission to help save the Earth. Ender is different than other kids.  He is sensitive in ways that others are not. He understands his opponent and through understanding them, he is able to destroy them. It is very interesting the way the military is made up of the best and brightest youth who are sent into battle by the old(er) men who stand behind their safety glass and watch.  Sound familiar?  

Day 6 - Digital Culture (MACRO, NOT micro!!) #edcmooc

Last night I found the area of the discussion boards which contains the "Made By You" section and there I found the 60+ area.  Since I am not yet 60, I hesitated to click on the link, but having 30+ years of teaching under my belt I thought I might have something in common with these people so I clicked and was immediately glad that I did.  The first thing I saw was a post which voiced something that I have felt every since I started teaching online. It said, "Just turned 63 - it's difficult to believe. Am training in learning to teach online and completely resisting video. My self-image is still 33.....but then I look in the mirror..."

Personally, I have taught since I was 23 when my students seemed old to me...now they are younger than most of my children, and my self image is still in my mid-twenties. (I'm sure this has a place in our course under the umbrella of "digital culture!") But also in this 60+ discussion board was a video made by a classmate on her iPhone and it was so simply beautiful and un-self-conscious that I was inspired to "go for it" and make a video on MY iPhone.  

I want to address the point that when I signed up for this MOOC, I really expected something quite different.  The term "digital cultures," to me, had a more “micro” definition.  I thought we would be studying digital culture or even "community," as it applied to an online course or MOOC. Now, the MOOC we are currently taking has MUCH online community.  There’s a lot of interaction between the students, there's a lot of different ways that networking is occurring. There is a feeling here of connectedness--that’s more what I felt we would be studying--how it applies to a MOOC environment, but I was wrong.  This is a much more “macro” interpretation.  We are talking about digital culture as it applies to humanity as a whole.  Yet this too, is very interesting to me.  I have never really studied this academically. It’s been around me my whole life, of course, but I’ve never really looked at it from an academic perspective so I’m very excited by the contents of this course and after studying this academically, how I can apply this on a more “micro” level to my own online courses.

So here is my video summary of the first week of EDMOOC, wrinkles, under-eye bags, and 30+ years of student concerns (oh, and I don't sound like this in my head, either!!):